The case of a Hanover County mother is providing a test of the proposition that parents matter — a currently popular Virginia political slogan.

Four years ago, Tina D. Woodson had four children living with her and her truck-driving husband Jonathan Woodson in Ashland.

Today, only the youngest child lives with the couple, and Mrs. Woodson said she has found herself repeatedly blocked by the Hanover County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court from reunifying with the other children, teenage twins and an 8-year-old boy.

Essentially, she has been legally stripped of her parental rights when it comes to the three children, who no longer live with her even though no court has ever terminated those rights.

For nearly four years, the 38-year-old Black Army veteran has not been able to communicate with or been allowed to visit her children. She said she has had only two calls from her son who snuck away briefly to appeal to her to allow him to come home.

“I have been prevented from being in my children’s lives,” Mrs. Woodson said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Despite the couple spending more than $35,000 in legal fees, she said the legal system has “worked against my Black family and brought shame to me.”

While Hanover County Social Services as well as the judges involved have not responded to Free Press queries, this enforced separation of the Woodson children from their parents appears to fly in the face of a long-standing state policy.

“Return home shall be the primary goal for all children in foster care … regardless of the circumstances at the time of removal,” the Virginia Department of Social Services states in its Child and Family Services Manual.

According to the manual, social workers should make every effort to create a “reunification process … to safely reconnect children to their families. The service worker shall make reasonable efforts to return the child to his parents or custodians within the shortest practicable time.”

Mrs. Woodson still has hopes that could happen for her younger son.

She appealed the latest order from the Juvenile and. Domestic Relations Court that bars her from regaining custody. She now waits to learn whether the Circuit Court will overturn the lower court after evidence at a hearing now scheduled for next month.

She said the two older children are so estranged she sees no prospect of their coming back.

The disruption of the family began March 3, 2020, as the older children prepared for school, which were still open as the pandemic had not yet begun.

That morning, Mrs. Woodson discovered by accident that her two oldest children had been ignoring the cell phone policy and briefly swatted each of them with the soft end of a belt in seeking to re-establish discipline.

Her strikes with the belt left marks, and at school, the twins were questioned about what happened. The alleged abuse was reported and the results was the Hanover Child Protective Services swooped in and removed the twins and later, the son.

The older children were placed with her parents and her son was placed with his biological father in North Carolina. Free Press queries to them have gone unanswered.

Mrs. Woodson said she sought to meet the requirements that CPS workers laid down for her to get her children back. She had a mental evaluation, attended a 20-week parenting class, took a separate six-week parent coaching class and underwent a parental assessment.

But the reunification never happened after the commonwealth’s attorney stepped in and charged Mrs. Woodson with assault and battery of a family member.

While a parent is authorized to use corporal punishment, judges in the juvenile court and then the Circuit Court convicted Mrs. Woodson after finding that the belting was excessive due to the marks left on the children.

The convictions were eventually thrown out, though it took nearly two years.

The Virginia Court of Appeals reversed those convictions. Writing for the court, Judge Lisa M. Lorish stated Mrs. Woodson’s actions fit with the parental exception to battery as the evidence did not show that the children were significantly harmed.

Judge Lorish found the record showed the conviction was based on the lower court’s impermissible second-guessing of Mrs. Woodson’s decision to use corporal punishment.

That, coupled with the fact that the children had only transient marks from the soft end of a belt means the evidence “falls short of what a reasonable fact-finder could conclude is excessive,” Judge Lorish concluded.

But that ruling did not change anything, Mrs. Woodson said. “I was exonerated and the children were supposed to come back. But that never happened.”

Instead, Mrs. Woodson said she faced fresh opposition from Virginia F. Podboy, the attorney named guardian ad litem to represent the interests of the three children. Ms. Podboy, who has not responded to aFree Press query, refused to agree to the children’s return to the Woodsons, Mrs. Woodson said.

Mrs. Woodson said the Juvenile Court judge adopted Ms. Podboy’s requirement that she get reunification counseling.

The requirement was verbal and not included in a court order, Mrs. Woodson said. She said every therapist she consulted told her they without such an order, that could not share their confidential report with the court. And some told her, she said, the counseling would be a waste of time and the Woodson’s money because the child already had expressed interest in returning home.

Mrs. Woodson said the court rejected her explanation and refused to alter the current arrangements for any of the children. “I have tried to do everything I have been told to do to get my children back,” Mrs. Woodson said, “but I keep being told I have been noncompliant. All I can do is hope and pray that this nightmare will end.”